


In The Heart

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [15]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witches, Crossover, Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 04:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7084927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, temporary character death."</p><p>Evan takes a nasty hit in an off-world mission gone wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Heart

Rodney knew something was wrong when he heard one of the Marines shout, “Sir!” But he couldn’t look, couldn’t shift his concentration, had to get the DHD up and running so they could go home.  
  
Teyla shouted, “Ronon, no! It was an accident!”  
  
There was a roar. An inhuman roar. Ronon had shifted into leopard form. What the hell? Rodney did turn to look.  
  
And there. Oh. Evan, lying still in the grass, limbs akimbo, a knife in his chest.  
  
Ronon tore into the natives, pouncing on one, crushing the man’s skull in his jaws, shaking the corpse aside, leaping at a woman armed with a spear.  
  
“Rodney,” John snapped, and Rodney was jolted out of the horror of the carnage. He turned back to the DHD and yanked at the control crystals with trembling hands.  
  
“Ronon,” the Marine - Coughlin - shouted. “Ronon, change back.”  
  
Rodney heard another feline roar.  
  
“Ronon,” Coughlin said, and his voice broke. “I can’t - I can’t carry him.”  
  
The crystals hummed to life beneath Rodney’s hands. He snatched them back just in time to avoid being shocked, and then he reared up on his knees, slammed the buttons to dial home. At the sound of the ‘kawoosh’ of the unstable vortex forming, Rodney dared to lift his head. John, Teyla, and the Marines were arrayed in front of the gate, weapons aimed at the cowering natives.  
  
Ronon, human once again, knelt and scooped up Evan’s limp form. The cold fury on his face was terrifying. He went through the gate first. John beckoned for Rodney to go second, and he ran, didn’t look back, trusted that John would follow. When he landed in the gate room, it was totally silent, everyone staring at Ronon with Evan in his arms.  
  
And then Elizabeth shouted, “Medical to the gate room immediately. We have -”  
  
“He’s dead,” Ronon said flatly.  
  
John, Teyla, and Evan’s marines came spilling through the gate behind them, and then the wormhole shut down. Carson and a team of medics came rushing into the room with a stretcher and a medical bag. Ronon laid Evan’s body carefully on the stretcher, and the medical team swarmed it. Evan’s tac vest and gear were handed off to Reed, who almost dropped them. The nurses and Carson were all shouting, handing instruments back and forth, but Carson’s voice, quiet and sure, was somehow audible over the chaos.  
  
“Time of death, seventeen-fifty-three, Atlantis Standard Time.”  
  
The medics stepped back, expressions grim. Ronon’s expression was unreadable.  
  
Carson reached up, closed Evan’s eyes.  
  
“I’ll take him to the infirmary,” Carson said quietly.  
  
Ronon said, “I’m coming with you.” None of the medical staff dared question him as he helped Carson wheel the stretcher out of the gate room and to the nearest transporter.  
  
Rodney followed. He couldn’t help it. John and Teyla and Evan’s Marines followed. The medics brought up the rear, had to wait behind for a second transporter journey. In the infirmary, Carson and Ronon were standing beside the examination table Evan had been laid on.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Carson said. “There’s nothing I can do for him. This is beyond my magic. Raising the dead is -” He shuddered.  
  
Ronon wheeled around to John. “Could you save him? If you gave him some of your vampire blood?”  
  
“What? No!” Rodney cried, because he couldn’t watch John go through blood withdrawal again.  
  
John shook his head. “I would if it would help, but it only works on humans or witches, not shifters.”  
  
Rodney realized the emotion in Ronon’s eyes wasn’t rage - it was grief. He turned away, chest heaving, hands clenching and unclenching. Finally he said to Carson, “What next?”

Carson swallowed. “We’d have to prepare his body for burial.” He glanced at John. “I - do you have a copy of Evan’s will? He might have left provisions to - to be skinned, for -”

Ronon snarled and stepped between Carson and the examination table. Ronon was wearing shifter combat leathers, as was Evan. Rodney knew how they functioned, had been dying to get his hands on a sample to try to figure out the science behind it, but he’d never really thought about how shifters got their combat leathers. From dead shifters, yes. But Evan was -

“I’ll check his file,” John said. “Why don’t we give Ronon a moment alone?”

Carson nodded. He turned to Ronon. “I swear I’m not going to hurt him,” he said, even though it was a moot point. Evan was dead. He’d never feel pain again.

Rodney thought of all the pain he’d inadvertently caused Evan and wished he could take it all back.

“I just need to - to pull the knife out,” Carson said.

Ronon grunted. “I’ll do it.” He reached out, placed a gentle hand on Evan’s chest, and tugged.

The knife came free in a single smooth slide. Ronon set it aside, then nodded at Carson, and together they unfolded a sheet, drew it up over Evan in quiet respect.

“We should go,” Rodney whispered to John, tugged on his elbow.

Evan sat bolt upright with a heaving gasp and an, “Ow, _fuck_.”

His marines actually screamed.

Ronon tore the sheet aside. “Evan!”

“That always hurts so damn bad.” Evan doubled over, one hand pressed to the gaping wound in his chest. “Right in the heart, too. Can’t wake up till someone pulls it out.” He uttered another litany of curses. Ronon wrapped an arm around his shoulders, trying to soothe him.

“Evan?” Teyla asked.

Carson picked up the knife, examined it. “It’s not silver,” he said.

“So?” one of the Marines - Stevens, Evan’s 2IC - demanded. His eyes were wide; he looked spooked.

“Silver and fire are the only things that kill a shifter,” Carson said. “That and, eventually, old age. Old, old age.”

“You could have said so before,” Rodney protested, but he was pretty sure John or Evan or Carson had told him that tidbit sometime previously.

“He had no pulse,” Carson protested. “I assumed, given the looks on everyone’s faces, that it was a silver knife.”

“Drugs, please, Doc,” Evan gasped out.

“Right!” Carson turned and rooted in a drawer, tore open a syringe packet. “Give me your arm.”

Ronon helped Evan hold out one arm, because he was still doubled over in agony.

“I knew Major Lorne was badass,” Reed whispered, “but _damn_.”

Rodney couldn’t stop staring at Evan, couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Evan had been dead. He’d been _stabbed in the heart_. But because the knife wasn’t silver, he’d survived.

Rodney had known that John and Carson and Evan and now Ronon weren’t human, but he’d never really understood it, not even when he’d watched Carson cup glowing hands over a wound to speed up healing, like he was doing now.

“We should go now.” It was John’s turn to tug on Rodney’s wrist.

Rodney nodded dazedly, let John drag him back to his quarters for a shower, and then they fell into bed together, heedless of who would notice in the morning. Rodney lay awake as John fell asleep. In sleep, John’s face was free of worry, and he looked younger, sweeter, more vulnerable. Rodney wondered if John would always look this way as Rodney grew older and older and older.

Rodney decided he didn’t care. He leaned in, pressed a kiss to John’s brow, and drifted off to sleep, grateful that everyone had made it home alive - eventually.


End file.
